KAFKA

DISCOVERY:
I sought this one out based upon the excellence of Soderbergh's previous film, sex lies and video tape.

OPENING SCENE:
In the opening scene a man runs across a bridge and through deserted streets as though for his life. After suffocating him, a crazed madman removes a photograph from his victim's person. He hands it to his master, a stately gent, and is rewarded with a potion.

PLOT:
In the next scene we find Kafka at his desk, contemplating the absence of his friend, Eduard Raban. Irons plays him well as a sober, droll, low-level clerk. (Kafka really was a claims report writer at a firm for several years of his life.
In the middle of the night Kafka is summoned at his residence by the police. Upon arrival at the hospital he is asked to identify the body of his companion, Eduard. Later it is revealed by Eduard's mistress, Gabriela, that they both led double lives: office clerks by day, and bomb-tossing revolutionaries by night. Kafka must learn the truth behind his friend's untimely death. Was it suicide as the police claim? Gabriela thinks not. Was it murder? If so, why? And by whom? The police appear as shady gangsters—-not to be trusted. All clues lead to the sinister castle. However, one does not simply enter uninvited and expect to live to tell of it.

Only when Kafka becomes next-in-line for Eduard's fate does he abandon the security of his desk life to penetrate the castle and discover what secrets it conceals. With the help of Bizzlebek the grave digger, Kafka gains access through a secret back door. Is Kafka next? Will he discover the truth? Will he escape to reveal it? Rent it and find out.

CINEMATIC SIMILARITIES:
The two movies I was most reminded of in watching KAFKA were Naked Lunch, and Brazil. While KAFKA and Brazil show us dystopias, parodies of 1984, Naked Lunch does not realize anything as ambitious. Brazil, co-written by Tom Stoppard (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead) is Terry Gilliam's (of Monty Python) second black humor direction (Time Bandits was his first). Brazil, Naked Lunch and KAFKA all contain a moody, bleak atmosphere of an emotionally barren or emotionally bankrupt society. Brazil and KAFKA depict a paranoid society of a security state, an army of bureaucrats enslaved to the toil of meaningless paperwork and the process of burying the dead, be it in graves, or on file. Yet seething just below the surface of the tedium, lie acts of atrocity, violence and inhumanity (as though office work were not torture enough).
The heroes of both Brazil and KAFKA are cogs of a bureaucratic machine who wake up and rebel. But are they too late? Are they a match for the odious system?
The crux of both plots lies in an error in paper work. For KAFKA it is an insurance claim filed on a living person slated to disappear. In Brazil, it is a misspelling on an arrest warrant issued by a government bureau's machine.

DRAMA:
KAFKA is not without comic relief. In fact, it borders on black humor, as drama of the absurd tends to. In addition to a wealth of humor found in the film's subtleties and nuances, there are obvious displays. For instance, in the movie, Kafka is given two assistants, a veritable pair of twits reminiscent of Laurel and Hardy. The film is littered with their antics.

FINALE:
Our hero learns the horrible truth. But nothing seems to have changed. Was it all of his imagining?

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR:
Director Steven Soderbergh is no newcomer to the cinema. His first film, sex lies and videotape, won the Golden Palm at Cannes Film Festival.

FLAWS:
Although the film is engaging, entertaining and suspenseful, it has nothing to do with the works of Franz Kafka once he enters the castle. Anyone familiar with the works of Kafka knows this.

...Kafka has never been influential. It's his imitators who are influential. That's what gives every great artist his real prestige...is his imitators.

cover art Kafka

credits:
98:00 min. 1991 France/USA English Color/B&W

Directed by: Steven Soderbergh
Written by: Lem Dobbs

Jeremy Irons	....	Kafka
Theresa Russell	....	Gabriela
Joel Grey	....	Burgel
Ian Holm	....	Doctor Murnau
Jeroen Krabbé	....	Bizzlebek
Armin Mueller-Stahl	....	Grubach
Alec Guinness	....	The Chief Clerk
Brian Glover	....	Castle Henchman
Keith Allen	....	Assistant Ludwig
Simon McBurney	....	Assistant Oscar
Robert Flemyng	....	Keeper of the Files
Matyelok Gibbs	....	Concierge
Ion Caramitru	....	Solemn Anarchist
Hilde Van Mieghem	....	Female Anarchist
Jan Nemejovsky	....	Mustachioed Anarchist

Credits complements of IMDb

SOUND:
The music to the sound track of KAFKA, by Cliff Martinez, not only accentuates many scenes, but is beautiful and well worth owning. I believe the ensemble to be a quartet of zither, bass, bells and synthesizer key boards or a melatron. It is out of print and was available on CD only.

PERIOD/LOCATION:
KAFKA is a period piece set in Prague—-a dreary city beset by cathedral spires, overshadowed by a sinister castle--in 1919, during Franz Kafka's lifetime (1883-1924).

IMAGE:
Another cinematic influence evident is the use of black and white and color. The film begins black and white, but toward the end of the film, when Kafka opens a castle door, he is immersed in color. Closing the same door he returns to the world of black and white. What film does this remind you of? The Wizard of Oz (1939). Films by other directors to use this style: Russian director Andre Tarkovsky's Solaris (1972). Francis Ford Coppola's Rumble Fish (1983). German director Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire (1987,W.Gr.) What is Soderbergh suggesting?

ACTING STYLE:
Jeremy Irons' performance as Kafka reminded me of Peter Weller (Buckaroo Banzai) in his performance of Bill Lee, the William Burroughs character of Naked Lunch. Both men play the hard-boiled detective-type of cinema's film noir (circa 1940's-1950's) like Humphrey Bogart's Sam Spade. Unflappable. Numb. Armchair-macho. Kafka is portrayed as sober, cool and calculating, unlike Brazil's antihero, Sam Lowry (Jonathan Price), who comes off as a bumbling buffoon who over-sleeps. Kafka appears never to sleep. An insomniac?

Both characters are, as film critic Amy Taubman defines Lee,

...an outsider inept at coping with emotions or reality. He has a rational, cold approach. He is an articulate, educated loner, troubled to a manic extreme. A victim of his inability to resolve internal dilemmas. Played against him is a strong woman character—committed, at one with her desires, capable of action...

This holds true of the women in KAFKA, Brazil and Naked Lunch. Ironically, Ian Holm plays a part in all three films.
All three titles have trick endings. We are left to ponder: Was it merely a Walter Mittyesque dream? Herein the magic lies.

OTHER INFLUENCES:
The Third Man (1949) was another obvious influence upon Soderbergh in the making of KAFKA. It too is about a writer on a manhunt, only in post-World War II Vienna, not post-World War I Prague, complete with the haunting zither music. Was Kafka an influence on Graham Greene? Soderbergh no doubt referenced Orson Wells' translation of Kafka's The Trial (1962 black & white) to screen. This was the only other attempt by a cineaste to translate a work by Kafka. An excellent movie as well. Stars a young Anthony Perkins.

I wonder.

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—Igor Stravinsky, 1967

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